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Cardinals Pitcher Joins a New Team

Amy Peters and Shelby Miller enjoy their first dance as a married couple.Credit
Dan Gill for The New York Times

Some say that the pitcher’s mound can be the loneliest place on earth, with so much resting on the pitcher’s rhythm, arm and accuracy. For Shelby Miller, a 23-year-old player on the roster of the St. Louis Cardinals, not being selected to pitch for his team in this year’s World Series put him in an even lonelier place.

And when he needed to vent about being left in the bullpen, Amy Peters was the one person he could express his frustration to. “She would remind me that I was good and that there was some reason unknown to us why I wasn’t pitching,” Mr. Miller said.

His postseason absence is not an indictment of his career. He placed third in the 2013 National League rookie-of-the-year voting. He is “definitely a young pitcher to watch,” said Kary Booher, sports editor for The Springfield News-Leader, in Missouri.

For the last two and a half years, Ms. Peters, 22, has been Mr. Miller’s most loyal cheerleader. They met in June 2011, when he began playing for the Springfield Cardinals, a minor league team; Ms. Peters was a member of its cheering squad. “We had to sign a piece of paper telling us we could not socialize with the players,” she said. “I’ve always been really bad at following rules.”

Their love story began like that of many couples barely out of their teens: physical attraction, similar personalities and a lot of chemistry. But they would soon test whether their bond was strong enough to survive the world of professional baseball.

“I had noticed immediately that Amy was beautiful,” Mr. Miller said, and he was drawn to her lively and outgoing personality. He wasted no time in calling her — despite the fact that he had recently started casually dating someone else.

She, too, found him attractive, but had a boyfriend of three years. That boyfriend, however, had recently taken a job out of state, and she wasn’t ready to give up her life in Springfield to follow him. Besides her cheerleading job, she was enjoying her work at a hair salon.

She and Mr. Miller began texting each other frequently. “I was flattered by the attention, but I was standoffish because he was so sure of himself,” said Ms. Peters, who also feared that a relationship with a ballplayer would be fleeting at best.

But the mutual attraction remained strong, and he won her over with his sense of humor and his sweetness, Ms. Peters said, adding that she saw his genuine side. Within weeks, both had broken off the other relationship.

At practices and games, they kept their budding feelings a secret, but Mr. Miller sent her flirtatious texts from the locker room.

Soon, they were seeing each other after practice with a group of friends. This inner circle noticed a change in Mr. Miller. “He matured a lot quicker than most players,” said Joe Kelly, another St. Louis Cardinals pitcher and a close friend of his. “A lot of that had to do with meeting Amy.”

Ms. Peters liked that he defied most of her stereotypes of baseball players: He didn’t wear heavy chains around his neck, he wasn’t cocky and he didn’t act like a player when it came to women. “He was just really down to earth,” she said.

Mr. Miller found himself drawn to her tight-knit family life, which resembled his own.

Soon after the 2011 baseball season, four months after they met, he said, she took him home to her family at the resort they own and live at in Eminence, Mo., a town of 600.

Her mother, Lynett Peters, noticed that Mr. Miller at first appeared very shy. “I’m sure he must have been intimidated,” Mrs. Peters said. “But we just clicked.”

Photo

The bride steps up to the plate as the groom assesses her batting stance.Credit
Dan Gill for The New York Times

While kayaking during that visit, Mr. Miller formally asked her to be his girlfriend. Ms. Peters said she had never seen him so nervous. “I started falling in love with her,” he said. “I didn’t want it to end.”

They also discovered their shared religious backgrounds. (Mr. Miller grew up in Texas in a Baptist church; Ms. Peters in a nondenominational Christian one.)

“Shelby would mention something that he was praying about,” she said. “I could relate to that.” She had never spoken openly about her faith with a boyfriend before. “I never realized how important that was to me, until I found it with Shelby,” she said.

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Their relationship hit serious bumps during spring training in 2012. “We didn’t know how to handle the baseball life,” he said. Ms. Peters had quit her job at the salon in Springfield, and moved with him to Florida.

“I felt like I was losing my identity,” she said. “It was like I was living Shelby’s life. I was just there for him.”

At the same time, he was struggling with his on-field performance and came home with little energy to interact with Ms. Peters. She moved back to Springfield and returned to work.

Both say they were miserable during the few months they were apart but learned some lessons. She realized that as much as she loved working, she didn’t want to live away from Mr. Miller. He recognized that he needed to be a better partner at home. “I’m not a guy who likes to go back and talk about things that went wrong in a game,” he said. “Amy knows that. She doesn’t pressure me to talk.”

When he began playing for the Memphis Redbirds, a minor league team affiliated with the Cardinals, Ms. Peters moved in with him in Memphis. This time she knew what she was getting into and felt prepared.

They made time for each other, even for the lighter side of life. She thinks that he had been groomed from an early age (thanks to his three sisters) on how to interact with women. When she wants company for a pedicure or a tanning session, he joins her. “When Amy wants me to be a girlie guy,” he said, “I’m willing to do that for her. It’s fun.”

She learned to accept that his life involves travel — lots of it. “A lot of girls are needy, and want their boyfriends or husbands there all the time,” Mr. Miller said. “But Amy understands that I’ll be gone at times. That’s something I love about her.”

Nevertheless, Ms. Peters would like to find a flexible job that allows her to travel with the team some of the time, she said.

Although they’ve talked about having a family, they plan to wait, in part because she said she has come to recognize that baseball wives are “essentially single parents.” Mr. Miller said he will support her whether she wants to work or stay home with their children. “She’ll be great at either,” he said.

He began shopping for an engagement ring shortly before he was called to St. Louis in September 2012 to play in the major leagues, proposing in November 2012.

They were married on Nov. 16, at her parents’ resort in Eminence in front of a group that included Mr. Kelly, who was a groomsman, and Lance Lynn, another Cardinals pitcher, who was a guest.

The ceremony took place outdoors, overlooking Jacks Fork River, and was officiated by the Rev. Darrin Patrick, the St. Louis Cardinals’ chaplain. The Cardinals’ manager, Mike Matheny, recited a prayer before the buffet dinner.

Until meeting Mr. Miller, no one in the Peters family had made a habit of watching baseball. Now, the bride’s mother is fully versed and a loyal fan. “But we don’t see Shelby as a famous person,” she said. “We see him as a person who loves our daughter and treats her like gold.”

ON THIS DAY

When: Nov. 16, 2013

Where: River’s Edge Resort, Eminence, Mo.

Details: The bride wore pink cowboy boots, to match the bridesmaids’ bright pink, above-the-knee strapless dresses. The reception took place under a tent decorated with elegant simplicity in hues of pink and white. Besides the three types of beer offered on tap from a mobile mini-truck, the 170 guests were invited to enjoy the evening’s specialty cocktails: Amy’s Home Run, with Kinky Liqueur and Champagne, and Shelby’s Strike Out, a lime margarita.

A version of this article appears in print on December 1, 2013, on Page ST18 of the New York edition with the headline: Cardinals Pitcher Joins a New Team. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe